Primates in Our Midst is a May Term Travel Course through Illinois Wesleyan University in which students and course leaders (Dr. Ellen Furlong, Psychology and Jill Katka, Assistant Curator, Louisville Zoo) will explore primate minds.
We will travel to London to visit Charles Darwin's home, the Natural History Museum, the London Zoo, and Howlett's Wild Animal Park. We'll then head to Gibraltar, the famous rock on the coast of Spain, home to 200+ Barbary macaques, where we'll conduct research. Our last trip will take us to the Louisville Zoo where we'll build enrichment items for the animals.
Course Description:
Nonhuman primate minds are shaped for problems they encounter in the wild—foraging, social relationships, navigating space, etc. However, many face new cognitive challenges imposed by living with or around humans, either in captivity (i.e., in zoos or sanctuaries) or the wild (when humans co-occupy their habitats through urban sprawl, deforestation, ecotourism, etc.). Primates have succeeded to the extent they have thanks to a hallmark of their primate minds: the ability to change their behavior intelligently in reaction to new situations. We will examine how primates flexibly adapt to humans both in captivity (the London Zoo, Howlett’s Animal Park) and the ‘wild’ (Gibraltar Nature Reserve). We will then apply what we have learned to construct enrichment items for primates at the Louisville Zoo. This course will be physically demanding, requiring students walk several miles, climb steps and extremely steep hills, and work outside in various weather conditions (heat, rain).